New Time Editor: powerful nonlinear editing of keyframe or mocap animation
As with Maya 2017, also unveiled at Siggraph, the headline feature of Maya LT 2017 is the Time Editor: a new non-destructive, clip-based, nonlinear animation editor.

Any attribute that can be keyframed within Maya – including cameras and texture properties as well as characters – can be brought into the Time Editor as a clip.

The Time Editor can then be used to define the timing – the speed, duration, start/stop times, and so on – of the animation; then, once the timing is finalised, the new animation can be baked for use within Maya LT.

Complex animations can be built up in layers, and there is the option to store multiple alternate versions of an animation as separate compositions. The Time Editor also includes built-in audio editing tools.

As well as keyframe animation, the editor works with motion-capture data, including multi-take FBX files.

The software’s existing keyframe Graph Editor also gets a facelit, improving the visibility of animation curves through colour contrast, simplifying the stacked view, and moving the timeline to the top of the panel.

New Content Browser and custom workspaces
Other new features in Maya LT 2017 will also be familiar from Maya 2017 itself, although they’re a much smaller subset, given that LT lacks Maya’s simulation and motion graphics tools, both of which received big updates.

Of the remaining features, the biggest are probably the new Content Browser, intended to streamline the process of searching for scene assets, and the option to create and share custom Workspaces.